In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi'sTrust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Susan Choi is the author of the novelsMy Education,A Person of Interest,American Woman, andThe Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, she co-editedWonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She’s received NEA and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. She lives in Brooklyn.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF SPRING 2019 by Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Bustle, Refinery29,Town & Country, The Millions,TIME, andCosmopolitan AN INDIE NEXT PICK FOR APRIL

“Mind-bending. . . . A Gen-X bildungsroman that speaks to young generations, a Russian nesting doll of unreliable narrators, and a slippery #MeToo puzzle-box about the fallibility of memory. . . . [Trust Exerciseis] a perfectly stitched together Frankenstein’s monster of narrative introspection and ambiguity. . . . It flexes its own meta-existence—as a novel about the manipulation inherent in any kind of narrative—brilliantly.”—New York Magazine

“[Trust Exercise] burns more brightly than anything [Choi’s] yet written. This psychologically acute novel enlists your heart as well as your mind. Zing will go certain taut strings in your chest. . . . Choi builds her novel carefully, but it is packed with wild moments of grace and fear and abandon. . . . [A] delicious and, in its way, rather delicate . . . phosphorescent examination of sexual consent.”—The New York Times

“An intelligent and layered portrait of a school’s legacy. . . . [Trust Exercise] makes something dramatic and memorable from the simple elements of a teen movie.”—The New Yorker

“Perhaps the best [novel] this year. . . . [Trust Exercise] begins as an enthralling tale of teenage romance and then turns into a meticulously plotted interrogation of the state of the novel itself. . . . Read it once for pleasure, and then again to turn up all the brilliant Easter eggs.”—Vulture

“Book groups, meet your next selection. . . .Trust Exerciseis fiction that contains multiple truthsandlies. Working with such common material, Choi has produced something uncommonly thought-provoking.”—NPR

“Electrifying. . . . [A] story that cuts to the heart of gender politics and the teacher-student dynamic.”—People

“In her masterful, twisty [novel], Susan Choi upgrades the familiar coming-of-age story with remarkable command . . . [displaying her] talent for taking ineffable emotions and giving them an oaken solidity. . . . So many books and films present teenage years as a passing phase, a hormonal storm that passes in time. Choi, in this witty and resonant novel, thinks of it more like an earthquake—a rupture that damages our internal foundations and can require years to repair.”—USA Today

“A twisting feat of storytelling. . . . [Choi] uses language brilliantly. . . . She is an astute, forensic cartographer of human nature; her characters are both sympathetic and appalling. In the end, [Trust Exercise] is a tale of missed connection and manipulation—and of willing surrender to the lure and peril of the unknown.”—The Economist

“Choi’s voice blends an adolescent’s awe with an adult’s irony. It’s a letter-perfect satire of the special strain of egotism and obsession that can fester in academic settings. . . . [Choi is] a master of emotional pacing: the sudden revelation, the unexpected attack. . . . How cunningly this novel considers the way teenage sexuality is experienced, manipulated, and remembered. . . . The result is a dramatic exploration of the distorting forces of memory, envy, and art. . . . You won’t be disappointed.”—The Washington Post

“Compulsively readable and formally brilliant: this is basically a literary unicorn.”—Lit Hub

“Sharp, willy. . . .Trust Exercisebusts out of its coming-of-age shell and becomes a stranger and far more marvelous creature.”—Slate

“Choi, a master novelist, takes advantage of her prose’s magnetic qualities. . . . Kaleidoscopic. . . . Prepare for an ending that will make you questioneverything.”—Refinery29

“A rare and splendid literary creature: piercingly intelligent, engrossingly entertaining, and so masterfully intricate that only after you finish it, stunned, can you step back and marvel.”—The Boston Globe

“Fresh, nuanced. . . . Choi writes passages of real beauty, some of which stumble forth raw and unformed, fragments and observations that double back, accreting. Other times she deploys descriptions that feel more planned out and note perfect.”—amNY

"Fans of experimental plot structure will find much to love in [this] spellbinding new novel."—Elle

“A feat. . . . [Trust Exercise] isbold.. . . There is innuendo and insinuation and a hint of sinister. . . . In the end, there’s no shortage of insight in this novel. Or pathos.”—Bookforum

“[A] remarkable novel with a narrative twist that will knock you out.”—Bustle

“Gets at questions of truth and fiction in a way that feels, this year, particularly relevant.”—Vanity Fair

“Never have I ever encountered a narrative twist that caused me to questioneverythingI’d just read.”—Cosmopolitan

"Explosive. . . . [Trust Exercise] will linger long after the book ends."—Observer

“Immerses the reader in the suffocating hothouse atmosphere of a 1980s performing arts high school and all the intense drama, heartbreak, and scandal many remember from their teen years.”—Los Angeles Times

“Riveting. . . . [Trust Exercise] will surely become a favorite with book clubs.”—International Examiner

“A book you will very much want to discuss with other readers.”—Newsday

"Superb, powerful . . . Choi’s themes—among them the long reverberations of adolescent experience, the complexities of consent and coercion, and the inherent unreliability of narratives—are timeless and resonant. Fiercely intelligent, impeccably written, and observed with searing insight, this novel is destined to be a classic."—Publishers Weekly(starred review)

"What begins as the story of obsessive first love between drama students at a competitive performing arts high school in the early 1980s twists into something much darker in Choi's singular new novel . . . an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. . . . The writing (exquisite) and the observations (cuttingly accurate) make Choi's latest both wrenching and one-of-a-kind. Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive."—Kirkus Reviews(starred review)“[Choi’s] finest novel. . . .Trust Exerciseshould immediately put readers on alert . . . exposing tenuous connections between fiction, truth, lies, and, of course, people. Literary deception rarely reads this well.”—Booklist(starred review)

“Brilliant. . . .Trust Exercisedeftly shifts time and perspective, and teen drama becomes a dark, edgy exploration of boundaries between coercion and consent, theater and reality, charisma and manipulation, and student and teacher.”—The National Book Review

“As soon as I finished . . . [I was] desperate to talk about the novel with anyone else who’d read it. A startling, perplexing, fascinating book by a writer I’ve long been—and will always be—eager to read.”—R.O. Kwon, author ofThe Incendiaries

"Packed with the kind of shrewd psychological insights that make you sit up straighter, Trust Exerciseis a frequently brilliant novel that draws you in slowly and carefully and then becomes increasingly hard to put down. I don't want to give too much away, so all I'll say is that the book is full of twists that are thrilling without being manipulative or melodramatic. I am sure I am far from the only one who had to put aside everything else while I raced to the end."—Adelle Waldman, nationally bestselling author ofThe Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

"Trust Exercise is a brilliant and challenging novel, an uncanny evocation of the not-so-distant past that turns into a meditation on the slipperiness of memory and the ethics of storytelling. Susan Choi is a masterful novelist, who understands exactly where we are right now and how we got here."—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author ofMrs. Fletcher, The Leftovers, Little Children, andElection "An ingenious, morally complex exploration of how our youthful entanglements, cruelties, and traumas shape the rest of our lives. Choi’s writing is dazzling in its control and precision; this witty, sharp, unsettling novel grabs you and won’t let you go."—Dana Spiotta, National Book Award-nominated author ofEat the DocumentandInnocents and Others "I can't remember the last time I had such a visceral reaction to a book, or was so dazzled by a writer's inventiveness with structure. Susan Choi is a master andTrust Exerciseshould be on every human's reading list. A perfect knockout, with profound things to say about art-making, adolescence, and consent."—Julie Buntin, author ofMarlena

"This novel is a work of genius and should be a future classic. It has the most audacious narrative shift I've read since John Fowles'sThe Collector. Plus, it includes the phrase 'a virtuoso feeling-state lasagna.'"—Gabe Habash, author ofStephen Florida

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